On ICOs This Week we review Vernam: A commission free insurance on blockchain, CHERR.IO a blockchain solution for charitable donations and TALAO a decentralized and autonomous platform for talent. Remember this is just an opinion piece and if you wish to invest you will need to perform your own due diligence.
Vernam: A Commission Free Insurance On Blockchain
Vernam aims to be world’s first 0% commission insurance on the blockchain. They are looking to offer a decentralized platform, connecting various stakeholders in the insurance industry; customers, brokers, and insurance companies, through blockchain technology, making the insurance process less costly, fully transparent and more convenient.
The company is planning to offer clients the facility to purchase conventional insurance through the Vernam platform, while receiving a reward in VRN tokens equal to a typical broker’s commission (up to 30% of the premium price). Tokens can then be sold on an exchange or used for the purchase of conventional and crypto insurance products. The innovation behind this project lies in what they call “CryptoSafe”, which is a type of smart contract, guaranteeing compensation in VRN for a client when a defined set of events occur. Vernam wants to tackle the lack of consumer confidence experienced when dealing with insurance companies.
Token economics: the token crowdsale begins on May 15th and lasts until May 22nd. The bonuses will vary depending on when you purchase, starting with a 40% discount in the first 3 hours ($0.051 per VRN token), 20% after that for the first day, 10% thereafter. After 7 days VRN tokens not sold will be priced at $0.085. The total token supply is 1,000,000,000 VRN with a Soft Cap of 40,000,000 VRN tokens and a Hard Cap of 500,000,000 VRN tokens. Any unsold tokens will be burnt. The minimum buy is quite expensive, being 0.1 Ethereum (ETH), 0.01 Bitcoin (BTC) or $1,000 USD.
Token allocation: They are assigning 50% for the crowdsale, 20% for the CryptoSafe Insurance fund, with the rest spread among advisors, ambassadors, team members, founders, a liquidity pool, bounties and airdrops. From the proceeds, they’re devoting most of the funds to marketing (30%), 25% for product development, the rest among legal and administrative expenses and community growth. It’s unclear what is meant by community growth, but most likely it will be airdrops to attract new investors. The project is massive, which is why it makes sense that they’ve decided to launch only within the European market to begin with.
CHERR.IO: Blockchain Solution For Charitable Donations
CHERR.IO is a project which seeks to develop a platform for charitable, humanitarian and socially responsible organizations to operate. Through it, they hope to create a space which addresses the issues of doubt and mistrust that users have when making donations. They seek to provide real transparency, with low organizational costs and marketing fees, while avoiding instances of fraud and slow execution.
Through smart contracts, they plan on providing donors with increased efficiency and transparency, adding a rating system for charities and expanding the outreach of such organizations. The public ledger will allow donors to check where the money is going to in real time, and get rewarded for their donations. They want people to actively be part of the campaign by choosing the donations that will go on the platform through a voting mechanism, adding points to particular charities while promoting the cause.
CHEER.IO will give organizations a reason to buy tokens, since they’ll be needed for subscriptions, to list campaigns, for advertising and for whitelisting. As for donors, they’ll be able to use tokens for rating organizations, allocating funds from an emergency pool and to confirm the legitimacy of spent funds. As for the token holders, they’ll be able to activate or stake a project for additional reward and participate in the rewarding system. The website is beautifully laid out, as is the whitepaper. The CHERR.IO team is off to a good start, winning 1st place at the Hackathon during the week of the World Economic Forum in Davos/Klosters Switzerland and Slovenia.
Token economics: The presale begins on May 15th and will last until May 24th. Bonuses will depend on when you purchase, ranging from 39% to 19%. Whitelist is open, so you may want to hurry. As for the public crowdsale, this will begin on June 1st and will last until June 15th. The CHR token is based on the Ethereum platform, with a total supply of 200 million tokens. Token allocation will be 21% for founders and team, 7% for CHERR.IO contributors, 7% for partners and ambassadors and 5% among advisors, bounties and airdrops. As for the proceeds allocation, only 60% of the total supply will go for the crowdsale (120,000,000 CHR), and will be distributed at 50% for development, 25% for marketing, 20% for company operations and exchanges and 5% for legal. The price per CHR token is $0.15 and they’ll have a Soft Cap of $3 million and a Hard Cap of $12 million.
TALAO: Decentralized And Autonomous Platform for Talent
TALAO is an Ethereum-based project that aims to become a decentralized and autonomous platform dedicated to a talent on-demand model. Freelancers will be able to access a panel of companies requiring certain expertise, enabling them to benefit from smart contract-based payments and allowing them to build a community-based reputation, thereby disrupting the traditional working industry by eliminating its middlemen.
Currently, freelancing talent can lose up to 20% in commissions on certain platforms, additionally they may not own their own professional reputation and profile. As for contractors, there is a big risk that the freelancer information provided is misleading or false. Through smart contracts, this issue is resolved as the platform certifies the professional reputation of its users. The plan is to have a 0% fee rate, which seems hard to believe. Talent can have their own resume and professional reputation, certified by the community and stored in a decentralized reputation vault, allowing them to take ownership of and select the potential viewers of their qualifications. Businesses can get access to the certified skills of a talent pool, select the appropriate professionals, and find the profile that best matches their specific needs. Both parties can send and receive secured contract-based payments, convertible into fiat or cryptocurrencies, according to their agreement.
Token economics: The token name is TALAO and does not have a defined symbol just yet. The crowdsale will start on June 4th and will last until June 24th. Anyone who wants to take part in this one will have to go through a Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering process. 1,000 TALAO token will cost 1 Ethereum (ETH), with a Soft Cap of $5 million and a Hard Cap of $20 million. The total tokens supply is 150,000,000 TALAO. Token distribution will be 67% among the sale itself, 10% to the ambassador program, 8% founders, 7% cash reserve, 5% shareholders 2% bounty program and 2% advisors.From the token proceeds, 31% will go to software development, 19% marketing, 19% administration, 16% sales 13% cash reserve and 2% to legal and accounting.
Although the project proposes a good alternative to improve the profitability and control of freelancer profiles, there are already a variety of similar projects, not to mention current platforms such as Freelancer and Upwork which could already be implementing this new technology.
